Loomio
Mon 5 Dec 2016 11:54PM

Introducing... Loomio School!

AI Alanna Irving Public Seen by 308

Check it out: Loomio School

We've just published a rich knowledge base about online facilitation, building collaborative culture, case studies and training resources, and more. We hope to grow this into an open resource our whole community can use and contribute to.

Do you have any resources about online facilitation, workshop run sheets, training guides, or Loomio stories to share? We'd love to include them!

MB

Midi Berry Tue 6 Dec 2016 12:45AM

Look forward to studying this. Thank you!
love
Midi

JR

John Rhoads Tue 6 Dec 2016 12:55AM

Bravo Alanna!!! and Loomio!!! I'll check it out since I'm a knowledge
junky and will be useful in promoting my "virtual meetings" at Democracy
at Work ;-).

T

Tree Tue 6 Dec 2016 1:12AM

Hi Alanna,

I am not a frequent Loomio user and thus have no Loomio-specific materials to share (though i do recommend Loomio regularly to groups in need of an online decision-making tool). However, i'm writing because if you want resources for f2f decision-making and collaboration, there are a ton of handouts & articles on my website Treegroup.info. I also highly recommend the deck Group Works: A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings, which is available in print, PDF and iPhone versions.

S

Simon Tue 6 Dec 2016 7:51AM

Thank you for producing this wonderful resource. You've build a great tool, learnt a lot about how to use it well and it's so generous of you to share this knowledge.

JC

Julien Carnot Mon 6 Nov 2017 5:43PM

Thanks! I noticed the "new" decision types are only documented in the Beginner/Making decisions section (with great details, maybe too much detail for a getting started/beginner page?) and not all in the user manual (covering only proposals), which should be more detailed than a beginner page. I raised that issue (and one on the translation of Loomio School) on GitHub and @robertguthrie answered that the user manual should eventually be merged in Loomio School.

Working on translations and thinking about users, I think we should avoid unjustified duplication of information and make it clearer where to find which level of detail (even when the user manual is merged as a section of Loomio School).

Would people agree that the Loomio School Beginner/Making decisions section should be a lot shorter (I'm thinking quick presentation of the decisions concept and a bullet list of the different poll types and the situation in which you'd use it) and its current content would better be presented in sub-sections of a Making decisions section replacing the current Proposals sections in the user manual?

If so, I can PR this change in English (across both repos), and work on French translations once the change is merged, but I would rather be sure that's the way the Loomio project wants it before working on this!

RG

Robert Guthrie Mon 6 Nov 2017 9:31PM

@juliencarnot I'm not sure if I agree it should be a lot shorter. I imagine that the kind of people who read a manual at all are the kind of people who are looking for reasonably detailed information. The app is the first manual, if you like, and provides a short, but could be shorter, intro to each of the tools the first time you use them... Going to the manual after seeing that, I would expect that people are looking for a comprehensive introduction.

JC

Julien Carnot Mon 6 Nov 2017 9:49PM

@robertguthrie I absolutely agree that the app itself and the tooltip should answer most questions, and in my view it does give a lot of info on poll types.
I was under the impression the beginner section of the Loomio School was created to offer a quick onboarding tour and that the user manual would remain a separate section (ie. not in beginner heading) with all the details a power-user could need, but maybe I'm wrong!

RG

Robert Guthrie Mon 6 Nov 2017 9:59PM

Hrrm.. yea. Despite the name "beginner" we don't actually have any more advanced pages on the topics. I'm pretty keen to have a single place we can point to, for someone wanting to learn more than what the app can tell them.

The use case we most commonly have is someone who is new to Loomio (a beginner) but is trying to quickly become an experienced Loomio facilitator or coordinator. This is common for our local government clients who have selected Loomio for a project, but then need to go from 0 to 90% pretty quickly.

JC

Julien Carnot Mon 6 Nov 2017 11:19PM

OK, sorry I didn't get that both resources were to be merged under a single heading.

It's not easy to represent, but what do you think about this table of contents of Loomio School (compared to the current one) including most pages from the user manual (I've kept the folder/file name visible to indicate the origin of the pages or added a comment if needed)?

Summary

Theses pages from the user manual would be dropped/not migrated to Loomio School:
* Introduction (duplicates beginner/index)
* Getting started (duplicates beginner/starting /joining group)
* Pricing (duplicates https://www.loomio.org/pricing)
* Premium Features (duplicates https://www.loomio.org/pricing)

RG

Robert Guthrie Mon 6 Nov 2017 11:33PM

You are like a human aspirin, relieving me of headaches and simultaneously lowering my blood pressure!

I would suggest breaking the 3rd part of Learning to use into into 2 sections: "Discussions" and "Decision tools".

Thanks!

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